C2NY Graffiti Artwork Creation Event
The Movement of Graffiti Art presents a day at five points with Benj Gershman from LookAtLife.com, graffiti artist Meres One, and one of the largest and growing collections of public graffiti art. This clip was a summary of some of the highpoints of the day as well as showing off the artistic integrity of high-level graffiti art. C2NY, Lookatlife.com and MOGA themoga.com are all working hard to educate the masses of the merits and benefits of this relatively new and emerging social artform.
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Urban Art and Graffiti in Berlin – Urban Affairs Festival
- Graffiti on the Berlin Wall.
Berlin has lived an important process of continual redefinition and change since the Reunification in 1990. Now it has become world-famous because of its international architecture, its performing arts and its cultural diversity. Moreover, Berlin rates as one of the best locations for street art and graffiti. There is nothing unusual about graffiti covered walls in Berlin. The city has become a blank canvas for graffiti artists far and wide. The roots of graffiti culture can be traced back to West Berlin in the early 1980s, when the American-occupied sector was the reluctant melting pot of anarchist punks, Turkish immigrants and West German draft resisters. Nowadays, Germans accept graffiti in their cities because of the graffiti painted on the Berlin Wall. Once a symbol of division, the preserved parts of the wall now showcase some of the most famous graffiti in the world.
Grafiti may be vandalism, but it is also celebrated as street art and even regarded as an integral component of Berliner Strassenkultur. Some 45 street artists from nine countries are taking part in Germany’s biggest-ever urban art exhibition, which has been extended to the end of August because of the huge interest. It is the URBAN AFFAIRS Festival. Located in a post-industrial building, this 900 sq. meter exhibition space is the ideal location for the largest and most comprehensive Urban Art exhibition in Germany to date. It is one of the most interesting showcases of more than 25 international artists in this context. Jochen Kuepper (riot arts) originally from Cologne is one of the initiators and curators of this ambitious project, which tries to contribute as an alternative platform for backjumps or planet process, both bigger but also more established festivals of street art.
Urban Art and Street Art are experiencing increasing global attention from significant collections, publications and institutions in the established art market, as well as an academic reappraisal of the genre within the art historical context. Works by selected street artists continue to break auction records and the fact that URBAN AFFAIRS participants El Tono and Nano 4818 are currently exhibiting at the Tate Modern Museum in London symbolizes the staggering development and widespread notoriety of this anarchic art movement. Read more
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Learning Graffiti Art
It is only recently that graffiti and the street art scene have been viewed as something more than just an underground artistic movement. The image of the lone writer has been transformed from a deviant character to someone who should be showcased and promoted for his or her talents.
With the emergence of street art collectives such as Cable Street, Scrawl Collective and Monorex, a niche has opened in the market for popular graffiti. Almost every night in London, a gallery space or bar is exhibiting the work of an individual graffiti artist. From the world-famous to the new and upcoming, it has never been easier to promote your talents as an artist.
Take Secret Wars, for example, one of the many creations sprung from the London-based company, Monorex. It is a dedicated street art event hosted in Shoreditch, east London, and is designed to showcase the art of approximately 16 artists from around the country, through the medium of a battle. Following in the path of previous battle events such as Jump Off and Throwdown (which are solely about beat boxing, rapping and break dancing), Secret Wars has stretched the concept of street art even further by using the event to broaden interest in graffiti and character art.
Designed like an FA Cup knockout competition, every event sees two artists chucked out of the tournament. The night has had such amazing feedback that almost double the number of artists have requested to be involved in series 2 in late 2007. Even a European tour is in the pipeline. Although numerous attractive prizes are on offer, it is without a doubt the coveted title of Secret Wars champion that spurs the artists on and draws the crowds each month. Read more
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